Nuts!

We are having a banner year for acorns here at the Boggy Thicket.  The ground is covered with them, and they are dropping so often that it’s almost dangerous to step outside.

As I’ve mentioned before, we have several different species of oak trees on the property.  The acorns from the Live Oaks and Red Oaks are small – about 1/2 inch in diameter – but the acorns from the White Oaks are huge, and seem bigger than ever this year.  It is only a slight exaggeration to say that they are nearly the size and weight of a golf ball.

I was minding my own business, leaning on the gas grill the other evening when one of those big nuts bounced off of it, and it sure got my attention.  It wasn’t even a direct hit, more of a ricochet.  The acorn caromed off the roof of the house and hit the grill hard enough to make it ring like the Liberty Bell!

That got me thinking about the story of Chicken Little.  If he had been hit by one of those big White Oak acorns, he never would have run around telling anybody that the sky was falling.  That big old acorn would have taken him right out.